Charlie’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead. “Jailbird? You mean that extremely nice-looking, respectable-looking gentleman standing next to him? The one in the Top-Siders and the pink polo?”

“I should have said soon-to-be jailbird. He’s a concierge doctor. For now, at least.”

“A concierge doctor?” Charlie repeated, confused. “I thought a concierge was the guy in a hotel, the one who, like, asks you if you’re having a nice stay.”

“Yeah, it is. But it’s also a kind of doctor. They’re not affiliated with any hospitals, and they run what are called boutique practices. The way it works is that they have private patients who pay them a certain amount of money per year—in Dr. van Stratten’s case a lot of money—and then they give these patients their personal cell numbers, pager numbers, all that. So, the patient can reach them at any time, day or night, and they have to come running. They’re at the patient’s beck and call, basically.”

“How do you know all this?”

“He’s my mom’s doctor, and she calls him constantly. Well, she did call him constantly. She’s looking for a new doctor to phone-stalk now, hit up for Ambien prescriptions at weird times.”

“Why’s he going to go to jail?”

“He’s on trial right now for malpractice. A woman’s claiming he prescribed the wrong drugs for her husband, made him sicker or something, like almost-dead sick. Word is, he’s going to lose. Anyway, he was pretty much the doctor of everybody in town. Now, people are starting to distance themselves.”

“Poor Tommy,” Alice said, the words out of her mouth before she could stop them, realizing, as soon as they hit the air, how strange they sounded.

Cybill evidently didn’t think they sounded strange. She just nodded and sighed and said, “Yeah.” Then she said, “Okay, obviously Jude doesn’t want to be found, which means he must be doing something truly despicable. It doesn’t matter. This’ll be over in less than an hour now. Then we can get as fucked up as we want. Might as well get as much of a head start as we can with the champagne.”

“Sounds like an excellent plan to me,” Charlie said. She took a quick look around to see if any eyes were on her, then grabbed a half-drunk glass off a nearby table.

Cybill stopped her before she put her mouth to the lipstick-y rim. “You don’t have to take leftovers, you know. You can get a fresh glass.”

“I can?”

“Nobody’s parents around here care if they drink, so long as they don’t wind up failing out of school or walking around with puke in their hair. You know, embarrassing themselves.”

“Wow, okay,” Charlie said.

“Shall we go over to the champagne station?”

“Sounds good. Right, Alice?”